3rd March 2004

Sigh. Tonight a gang of scally kids were on the platform at Moorfields. As the train pulled into the station, one of them jumped onto the door step and held on, then jumped off again, all before the train had stopped.

If that idiot had fallen off the step to almost certain death under the train, his parents would have been splashed on the front page of tomorrow night’s Liverpool Echo, suing everyone within a 25-mile radius for negligence, when actually its their piss-poor parenting skills that are to blame. You know I’m right.

(and I won’t even mention the fact that seven Merseyrail staff members were milling around the ticket hall laughing and joking with each other and no-one was patrolling the station itself)

4th March 2004

What did the postman bring today? That’ll be a parcel from amazon.co.uk then. Anyway, I’ve decided I really like Jamie Cullum. I’m not sure why: I never analyse my musical purchases too heavily before buying them (which is why I have a copy of Pokémon 2 B A Master lying around somewhere). My Mum and my sister like him too, which is kind of scary, but still…

Also picked up Red Dwarf series 4 (or Red Dwarf IV if you’re sad) on DVD, as part of my ongoing project to analyse exactly when it was that Red Dwarf went crap. My current theory is that the descent into crapness began with series 5 (or V), with full-on crapocity achieved by the time series 7 (or VII) came along. My problem is I’m obsessed with completeness, so will probably buy the DVDs of these lesser series even though I know I’ll be disappointed, just so it doesn’t look weird on the shelf.

12th March 2004

Here’s an amusing tale of a woman who bought a mobile phone and discovered that its number was previously owned by Chris Rock (the Chris Rock). She describes some of the calls she got, and they’re great because they reinforce my notion that celebrities spend all their spare time phoning each other up and inviting each other to parties and social events.

This is one of those scenarios where, in the unlikely event it actually happened to me, the phone would belong to someone really lame like Bobby Davro. I’d probably get calls from Eddie Large inviting me to a round of golf or something.

13th March 2004

Friday was a bit of a classic telly night then: on the new, stupidly-named UKTV People channel was a 1990 episode of Have I Got News For You, full of jokes about BSB and Margaret Thatcher. 14 years ago, and it seems like a different world.

Then, after yet another terrific episode of Harry Hill’s TV Burp (have I mentioned how terrific this show is? Yes? Good), I flicked through the channels and alighted on Fox Kids Plus 1 who were showing, of all things, Ulysses 31. Hurrah for badly-dubbed early period animé! "Based on Greek legend" was the claim in Cable Guide when TCC showed this back in 1991-ish, as if this was required reading for students doing Classical Civilisation at Oxford.

Great to see it again though, mainly because somewhere in the UK tonight a ten year old boy, weened on Pokémon and Rugrats, will have stumbled across this show and have no idea what is going on.

They edited out the end credits with the catchy theme tune though. Damn them.

18th March 2004

I went into Dixons on Tuesday to pick up a new DVD player. I’m the sort of person who doesn’t ponder electronics purchases for too long, so I went in for the kill: I spied a Matsui DVD225 and went for it.

"You don’t want to do that," came a voice from out of nowhere.

I looked round, wondering for a moment if God had decided to make himself known through a high street store selling affordably-priced electrical goods. Then I turned around to see a slightly strange-looking man dressed in… well, it was an anorak.

21st March 2004

I’ve decided that if, in the future, I have a few grand to spare, I will buy the rights to The Children’s Channel from whoever owns them and relaunch the channel on satellite, complete with the station idents they used around 1990/1991.

29th March 2004

Thinking about nothing in particular while in the gym, my mind wandered onto Have I Got News for You and this line from Paul Merton during a discussion on celebrities who go out to war zones to entertain the troops:-

That’s the thing about Vera Lynn: she’ll have a shit anywhere.

And thinking about it, I couldn’t stop laughing. I got lots of funny looks from the other patrons, but… I’m used to that.